He set himself resolutely to think out a plan of action, but like many
men of tolerably fertile imagination he was at a loss for any expedient
in the presence of urgent need. He could watch Logotheti and Margaret,
and they would not easily recognise him, but he was fain to admit that
he had nothing to gain by spying on them. He had seen enough and heard
enough already to convince him that Margaret had allowed herself to be
led into a situation very dangerous for her good name, to say the
least. It did not occur to him that Logotheti wished to marry her,
still less that he meant to hinder her from singing in public. He could
not help thinking of the very worst motives, and he attributed them all
to the Greek.
The mild English man of letters was momentarily turned into an avenging
demon, breathing wrath and destruction upon his adversary. The most
extravagant and reckless crimes looked comparatively easy just then,
and very tempting. He thought of getting into Logotheti's cellar with
enough dynamite to blow the house, its owner and himself to atoms, not
to speak of half the Boulevard Péreire. He fancied himself pounding
Logotheti's face quite out of shape with his fists, riddling him with
revolver bullets, running him through in all directions with duelling
swords, tearing him in pieces with wild horses and hanging him out of
his own front window. These vivacious actions all looked possible and
delightful to Lushington as he walked up and down his little
sitting-room. Then came the cold shower-bath of returning common-sense.
He sat down, filled a pipe and lit it.
'I'm an awful ass,' he said aloud to himself, in a reproachful tone.
He wished that some spirit voice would contradict him, but in the
absence of any supernatural intervention the statement remained
unrefuted. The worst of it was that he had always thought himself
clever, and in his critical writings he had sneered in a superior way
at the inventions of contemporary novelists. Just then, he would have
given his reputation for the talents of the hero in a common detective
story. But his mind refused to work in that way, and he watched with
growing discouragement the little clouds of smoke that floated upwards
to the whitewashed ceiling without leaving the least shadow of a
serviceable idea behind them.
He looked disconsolately at the square patent leather toes of his
shoes, very dusty from bicycling, and he sadly passed his hand over his
smooth-shaven chin; the curious creases in his ready-made trousers, so
conspicuously in the wrong place, depressed him still further, and the
sight of his broad-brimmed hat, lying on the table, enhanced the
melancholy of his reflections. The disguise was admirable, undoubtedly,
but it had only helped him to see with his eyes what he had already
seen in imagination, and so far as he could guess, it was not likely to
help him one step further. At that very moment Margaret was probably
seated at Logotheti's table, without even Madame De Rosa to chaperon
her, and Logotheti's men-servants were exchanging opinions about her
outside the door. Lushington nearly bit through the mouthpiece of his
pipe as he thought of that, knowing that he was powerless to interfere.
The same thing might go on for a month, and he could not stop it; then
Margaret would make her début, and the case would be more hopeless
than ever.